Blinker

*meep meep*

June 19, Year 33

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Overnight guests at the Casa del Ship have been making complaints about disturbances in their rooms. Complaints include black stains left on the furniture, some prankster rearranging items when they're not looking, mocking messages appearing on walls, black stains appearing on their scales, nightmares, phantom laughter, under-skin wriggling, unexplained memory gaps, an inability to stop laughing, body parts stretching like taffy, and death.

At first these complaints weren't taken seriously, mostly because no one could ever find a body. The other day, however, one guest was discovered in a state of acute distress- in fact, let's not dance around it, I found him while bringing the traditional breakfast tray. Half his body was normally proportioned (bear with me) but was presently being enveloped in a black and white film- that is, a thin membrane, although any sense of the word "film" might apply too, in a way, to the other half of his body, which was sapped not only of color and texture but of dimensionality as well, and flickering oddly. He was becoming more flat by the second.

Our guest clearly needed a competent cursebreaker. And so it seemed that he was doomed, until- oh, what's his name… the unfortunate young pearlcatcher- he overheard my fretting, and he said that, while he'd never seen anything quite like this before (I don't suppose anyone has), he had experience with breaking spells so between the two of us we could kind of fix it.

I said what could I do? He said, you know things, right? I said I don't remember. He said to, uh, think about it. So I did. And it occurred to me that if my darling Fingers could paint an entire dragon to life, perhaps she could paint parts of one. So we hurried- our guest was two dimensional up to the forewings by now, and his eyes were bulging as if from great pressure- and found her in her den, chasing something in the walls.

The interruption seemed to anger her. She'd almost caught "it," she said. There was no time to beg her for an elaboration. But once we explained our situation she was willing to help. She brought her largest pen and the pearlcatcher brought the implements of his healing magic (did you know he had healing magic??) and over what felt like a very long day they struggled to stabilize the dimensional leakage while I hovered and hoped they weren't straining themselves. By the end, the patient was mostly ink and film with maybe an exposed nervous system floating in there (?), but at least he could move and speak in three dimensions.

Well, I believe theoretically he can speak. So far he hasn't communicated anything besides endless raucous laughter. I offered him my reminders book in case he'd be more comfortable with writing, but though he scribbled for quite some time in there it didn't work out any better. We may be forced to keep him with us until we learn what's happened to him and whether it's contagious. It's a strange situation but at least… at least he seems to be happy about it.

I need to wrap around something.

June 13, Year 27

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The mass of ink dredged from the Leviathan Trench by hella pirates began as one entity, but soon split into two. Maybe it was the Mother of Nightmare's intention to split them, maybe it was the ink's, or maybe it was something else… nobody involved is the type to be forthcoming with the truth.

When the inkies fled their captors, there wasn't much difference between them. But once they were recaptured (accidentally) by the power of art, things changed.

Blinker's twin Inker remains much the same as ever. Although the wanton siphoning of its ink has diminished its power, it can still stalk the Wasteland and take weaker prey so long as it doesn't stray too far from the Ship.

Blinker, on the other hand, was the smaller twin to begin with, and soon was drained to a mere two-dimensional image. It flits across pages and along walls, evading the stabbing pens that would suck it dry. Blinker even fears drying out in the sun.

While confined to an indoor existence Blinker has had plenty of time to get acquainted with the pictures it hides among, and has developed into a smooth talker (although mute, it can still form speech bubbles) skilled at changing its form and playing tricks. According to the writing on the wall, Blinker is fomenting a rebellion against the 3D world… but these rumors are difficult to substantiate, as all pictures questioned so far have been extremely uncooperative.

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